A DC-BASED COMPANY, and at our core:
DEVELOPING AND PRODUCING ORIGINAL WORKS OF MUSIC-THEATRE,
FOSTERING THE GROWTH OF ARTISTS,
AND ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY IN PARTNERSHIP
Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
In Flanders Fields
SPECIAL EVENT!
This Veterans Day, Tuesday, November 11, (previously Armistice Day,)
join us in a music-theatre program in remembrance of ancestors and others lost to commemorate what was known as “the war to end all wars.”
Alliance member artists John Boulanger, Alan Naylor, and Cara Schaefer will transport audience members back over a hundred years, bringing to life a very different era of the nation’s history through the lens of one American family caught up in the war. Portraying noted essayist, biographer, and playwright John Jay Chapman, his wife, Elizabeth Astor Chapman, and son Victor, they reminisce about Victor’s service in the French Foreign Legion and as a WWI aviator.
The program features Victor’s letters home, interspersed with poetry and songs written during the “Great War.” Selections include the iconic “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae, and poems by other noted war poets including Wilfred Owen, Alan Seeger, and Siegfried Sassoon.
You will also hear American popular songs by George M. Cohan and others, settings of John McCrae’s famous title poem by Charles Ives and John Phillip Sousa, and a group of settings of A.E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad” poems by British composer George Butterworth, a British composer who died in the war.
Victor joined the Foreign Legion in September 1914. After a year in the trenches, he joined the “Lafayette Escadrille,” the Legion’s American Aviation Corps, and was the first American aviator to perish in the conflict, all before the United States entered the war in 1917.
John Boulanger has curated the program after many years of research into the Chapmans legacy and led a showcase workshop of the work in 2017, which we presented at the Woodrow Wilson House to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into the conflict.
John and Cara have been featured in several original productions of New Music-Theatre. Helen Hayes award-winner Alan Naylor will serve as pianist in addition to portraying Victor Chapman.
The evening is a joint presentation with the Arts Club of Washington, and will take place in the historic Monroe House, which served as the Presidential residence after the White House was damaged during the War of 1812.
The Arts Club will provide a small bites buffet and beverages, included in the price of the ticket. The salon program starts at 7:00 pm.
Period Dress encouraged.
Tickets available HERE.